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Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon

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          This article is about the 20th century fashion designer, Lucy,
          Lady Duff-Gordon. You may be looking for the mid-19th century
          author, Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon.

   Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff Gordon ( June 13, 1863 – April 20, 1935) was
   a leading fashion designer in the late C19th and first decades of the
   C20th. She is often referred to as "Lucile," the name she gave her
   London couture house, she opened branches in Paris, New York City and
   Chicago, dressing high society, the stage and early silent cinema.

   Lucy Duff Gordon was a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in
   1912 and is still referred to as the losing party in the
   precedent-setting 1917 contract law case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady
   Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo decided against her in
   favour of her advertising agent.

Career

   Lucile in 1919, photographed by Arnold Genthe
   Enlarge
   Lucile in 1919, photographed by Arnold Genthe

   Daughter of civil engineer Douglas Sutherland and Elinor Saunders, Lucy
   Christiana Sutherland was born in London, England and was raised in
   Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Lucy’s younger sister was romantic novelist
   and screenwriter Elinor Glyn. In 1884, Lucy married James Stuart
   Wallace with whom she had a child, Esme. The couple divorced six years
   later in 1890. That year, in order to support herself and her child,
   Lucy began working from home, and by 1894 had opened Maison Lucile in
   Old Burlington St, London. In 1896, a larger shop was opened at 17
   Hanover Square, and by 1900, she was trading as Lucile Ltd at 23
   Hanover Square. In 1900 Lucile married Scottish landowner and sportsman
   Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon. Lucile Ltd had a prestigious clientelle
   including aristocracy, royalty, and theatre stars.Her business expanded
   with branches opening in New York City, Paris and Chicago in 1910, 1911
   and 1915 respectively.^

   Lucile was well known for her lingerie, tea-gowns and evening wear. She
   is credited with training the first professional fashion models (1896)
   and staging the first runway or " catwalk" style shows. She created
   theatrical invitation-only, tea-time fashion shows, complete with a
   stage, curtains, mood-setting limelight, music from a string band,
   souvenir gifts and programmes. Her dresses were given descriptive
   names, inspired by literature, popular culture, and Lucile's interest
   in the psychology, and personality of her clients.

   Lucile was known for layered, draped garments in romantic fabrics, and
   sophisiticated colours, often accentuated with sprays of hand-made
   flowers. However, Lucile was also known for simple, smart tailoring in
   suits and daywear.

   Influential clients, whose clothing influenced many when it appeared in
   early films, on stage and in the press included: Irene Castle, Lily
   Elsie, Gertie Millar, Gaby Deslys, Billie Burke and Mary Pickford.
   Lucile costumed many thaetrical productions including the London
   premiere of Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow (1907), the Ziegfeld
   Follies revues on Broadway (1915 -1921) and the D.W. Griffith silent
   movie Way Down East (1920). Her fashions were also frequently featured
   in Pathé and Gaumont newsreels of the 1910s and 20s, and she appeared
   in her own weekly spot in the British newsreel "Around the Town"
   (c.1917 - 1919).

   Lady Duff Gordon also wrote a syndicated fashion page for the Hearst
   newspaper syndicate (1910 - 1922), she authored columns for Harper's
   Bazaar and Good Housekeeping magazines (1912 - 1922).

   In addition to her prolific work as a couturiere, costumier, journalist
   and pundit, Lady Duff Gordon also took significant advantage of
   commercial endorsements, lending her name to advertising for shoes,
   brassieres, perfume and other luxury apparel and beauty items. Among
   the most innovative of her licensing ventures were a two-season
   lower-priced, mail-order fashion line for Sears, Roebuck & Co.
   (1916-17), which promoted her clothing in special de luxe catalogs, and
   a contract to design interiors for limousines and town cars for the
   Chalmers Motor Co, later Chrysler Corporation (1917).

RMS Titanic

   In 1912, Lucile was called to New York on business, and she and her
   husband, along with Lucile’s secretary Laura Mabel Francatelli, booked
   first-class passage on the ocean liner RMS Titanic under the names Mr.
   and Mrs. Morgan. On April 14, at 11:40 PM the Titanic struck an iceberg
   and began to sink. While the lifeboats were being lowered the Duff
   Gordons and Lucile's secretary were able to get into lifeboat 1. The
   lifeboat was built to hold forty people, but was lowered with just
   twelve.

   Some time after the ship sank, Lucile reportedly said to her secretary,
   "There is your beautiful nightdress gone." A crewman, annoyed by
   Lucile's remark, replied that the couple could replace their property,
   while he and the other crew members in the boat had lost everything.
   Other sailors began complaining about their belongings until Cosmo Duff
   Gordon offered each of them £5 to help them get back on track after
   they were rescued, but also as a means of keeping peace in the boat.
   Afterwards, rumors that the Duff-Gordons had bribed the crew not to
   return to the wreck site to rescue people in the water threatened their
   reputations.

   The rumors, fueled by the press, made the Duff Gordons virtual "stars"
   of the disaster. On May 17, Cosmo Duff Gordon testified at the hearings
   of the British Board of Trade Inquiry into the disaster, and on May 20
   Lucile took the stand. The days the Duff Gordons testified attracted
   the largest crowds during the entire inquiry as members of British high
   society showed up to hear their testimony. While Cosmo faced tough
   criticism during cross-examination, Lucile had it slightly easier.
   Dressed in black, with a large, veiled hat, she told the court she
   remembered little about what happened in the lifeboat and could not
   recall any conversations. Attorneys, perhaps influenced by her mourning
   costume, did not press her very hard. The final report by the inquiry
   determined that the Duff Gordons did not deter the crew from any
   attempt at rescue.^ The Titanic episode in Lucile's life is perhaps the
   most tangible, thanks partly to motion pictures; she was portrayed in
   cameo by Harriette Johns in A Night to Remember (1958), produced by
   William MacQuitty, and again by Rosalind Ayres in James Cameron's
   Titanic (1997).

Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon

   In 1917, Lucile lost the New York Court of Appeals case of Wood v.
   Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Cardozo made new law when he
   held Lucile to a contract that assigned the sole right to market her
   name to her advertising agent, Otis F. Wood. Cardozo famously opened
   the opinion with the following description of Lucile:

          The defendant styles herself "a creator of fashions." Her favour
          helps a sale. Manufacturers of dresses, millinery, and like
          articles are glad to pay for a certificate of her approval. The
          things which she designs, fabrics, parasols, and what not, have
          a new value in the public mind when issued in her name.

   Although the term "creator of fashions" was part of the tagline in her
   columns for the Hearst papers, some observers have claimed that
   Cardozo's tone revealed a certain disdain for Lucile's position in the
   world of fashion. Others accept that he was merely echoing language
   used by the defendant in her own submissions to the court as well as in
   her publicity.

Later life

   Lady Duff Gordon's connection with her own design empire began to
   disintegrate following a re-structure in 1919, and by 1922 she had
   ceased designing for the company. Lucile Ltd continued after her
   departure with less success, whilst Lady Duff Gordon continued working
   from private premises designing personally for individual clients.

   Lucile herself continued as a fashion columnist and critic after her
   designing career at Lucile ended, and she wrote her best-selling
   autobiography Discretions and Indiscretions in 1932. She died of breast
   cancer, complicated by pneumonia, in a Putney, London nursing home in
   1935 at the age of 71 (on the anniversary of her husband's death).

Legacy

   Lucile's former assistant, Howard Greer, published his memories of his
   years working with her in the book Designing Male (1950). A dual
   biography of Lucile and her sister Elinor Glyn, called The 'It' Girls,
   by Meredith Etherington-Smith, was published in 1986. A number of
   international museum exhibitions have featured Lucile costumes over the
   last 20 years, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Cubism and
   Fashion" (1999), the Museum of the City of New York's "Fashion on
   Stage" (1999) and the Victoria and Albert Museum's "Black in Fashion"
   (2000). (The V&A currently displays a Lucile suit (2006)) The first
   exhibition devoted exclusively to her work was the Fashion Institute of
   Technology's "Designing the It Girl: Lucile and Her Style" (2005). . A
   small display of Lucile designs can currently be seen at the Titanic
   Museum at Branson, Mo.(2006)
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